Surgery: Waiting Lists
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of the implementation by some NHS Integrated Care Boards of minimum waiting times for elective treatment; and what assessment he has made of the potential impact of this on (a) patient choice (b) the ability to meet NHS constitutional access standards.
Answered by Karin Smyth
There is no formal policy supporting minimum waits in the National Health Service. However, the NHS Standard Contract technical guidance for 2025/26 states that commissioners may choose to include minimum waiting times in Activity Planning Assumptions to ensure the delivery of targets within agreed financial allocations. The full guidance is available at the following link:
Patients continue to have a legal right to choose where they go for their first appointment when referred to consultant-led care as an outpatient.
We will work closely with all systems to ensure they deliver the expected level of improvement in waiting times set out in 2025/26 Planning Guidance, which is the first step in delivering on our commitment that by March 2029, 92% of patients wait no longer than the constitutional standard of 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment.
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